


Like This You Keep Them Alive

by sparkycap



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:37:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7663318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkycap/pseuds/sparkycap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carwood Lipton dies on the side of a dirt road somewhere between Rachamps and Haguenau. It's just another meaningless death in what is fast becoming, to Ron, a meaningless war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like This You Keep Them Alive

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an alternate ending to a larger, canon divergent fic that I haven't written yet in which Lip and Speirs meet at Toccoa and, well, you can imagine what happens after that. Except in this version it ends in death and despair, so if you're not into that I'd back away now. Endless thanks to whip-pan for the beta!

Somewhere between Rachamps and Haguenau, Lipton gets hit.

A sniper puts a bullet in his head, a clean shot through his right temple. Ron thinks of the tank burst in Carentan, a jagged scar along Lipton’s right cheek, and the graze that cut up the right side of his face in Foy. He stands frozen in place as Shifty takes out the shooter in a matter of moments, as the men do their jobs with numb, jerky movements because shock is nothing compared to their training, and thinks, _third time’s the charm_.

Ron stands over Lipton. He can’t look at his face. He can’t look away. There’s blood in the snow.

Nix stands beside him and makes noises about Ron not needing to see this, low and quiet so the men don’t hear. Ron just lets his eyes track the bloody snow back to the hole in Lipton’s head, the blank expression on his face. Distantly, he hears Dick telling Nix to get him out of here, like he thinks Ron’s going to lose it and give too much away.

That’s ridiculous, of course. Doesn’t he know what just happened? Ron doesn’t have anything left to give.

Nix prods him in the back, far gentler than they normally are with each other, and Ron lets himself be led away. He’s never had any use for looking backward, it’s too much like regret—but this time he can’t help himself.

Someone has closed his eyes. It looks like he’s resting, getting the sleep he’s been missing since they entered the Bois Jacques. He needed it, too. He’d been sick and only getting sicker since they pulled out of Rachamps, a rattle in his chest the doc thought might be turning into pneumonia.

He could just have easily died from that, if he’d lived long enough.

 

They’d always known their chances of surviving the war. They’d spoken about it, sometimes, hushed whispers in cheap motel rooms in Georgia when Lipton managed to hold on to his forty-eight hour pass. No one asked questions if you disappeared for the weekend back then, just greeted you Monday with a pat on the back and a salacious grin and maybe a casual _so, what was her name_?

At first it had seemed unlikely they’d both make it through unscathed. After Normandy, after Bastogne, it had seemed unlikely either of them would.

Ron had always thought it would be him, even if he’d never say it out loud. He wouldn’t have thought twice about making a statement like that, once, but Lipton had always had a way of changing things for him. The way his smile would falter, the way the shine in his eyes would dull, the way the furrow in his brow would deepen—these are things Ron never wants to be responsible for, things that wouldn’t, as far as Ron’s concerned, even exist in a perfect world.

Lately, Ron’s idea of a perfect world has been one that he’s not a part of anymore. It would be so easy.

The opportunities present themselves at every turn.

Here, in Haguenau, where bombs drop and the men dive for basements like they’re trained, he stands aboveground. He hasn’t said a sincere prayer in fifteen years, but hell if he isn’t ready to break that streak for a direct hit, shrapnel through his skull, anything. Behind his eyelids, Lipton watches in that quietly devastated way of his, angry and apologetic and urging Ron to move. He sighs and acquiesces—slow, heavy steps toward shelter, disappointment welling in his throat. The barrage is over before he gets there, but it’s the thought that counts.

Then the patrol, with no officers to speak of and a huddle of battle-weary, grief-filled noncoms to choose from, he could offer to lead. Sink wouldn’t approve, but Dick would do it to give the men a break. It’s not like anyone has to put it in the report. There are few things Ron craves, these days; credit isn’t one of them. Jackson dies instead, and Ron tiredly leaves the tangle of guilt-anger-jealousy to rot, unexamined, in his chest.

The next night, no patrol to carry out and a false report to come, he could step up. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s swam across a cold dark river for intel all by himself; it wouldn’t even be the first time he thought he wouldn’t make it back. Last time, bleeding and sore and determined, he’d fought his way to the opposite bank and got a medal for his troubles. This time he would take the relief the river offered, numb and cold and still not as cold as Bastogne (not as numb as Lipton, dead before he hit the ground). The men are moving off the line soon, and the war is said to be all but over—the only man he’d be letting down is too dead to notice.

In Mourmelon, he pushes the men hard just in case. He goes through his own motions mechanically and dreams of training accidents.

Landsberg is too full of death to think of adding any more. For the first time, Ron is almost glad Lipton isn’t here. Glad that if nothing else, Lipton didn’t have to see this. Even when he closes his eyes and sees nothing but bodies, even when he gets back to his room and feels his uselessness draining him into an intangible thing, even when he can’t think of a single thing that will make him feel real again besides Lipton’s touch, he’s almost glad.

 

Eventually, the war gets to a point where the downtime actually begins to resemble something like downtime.

Harry invites him to play poker and he doesn’t say no. He’d rather be doing any number of other things—nursing his heartsickness like a physical thing, lying in his commandeered bed as if fake sleep will cure this bone deep exhaustion if he just pretends hard enough—but Lipton had never liked it when he isolated himself. Nix drags him out for drinks and watches him too carefully when he thinks Ron’s not looking, and Ron feels Lipton’s gratefulness eclipse his own resentment.

They capture the Eagle’s Nest and he drinks too much. This would have meant something to him, once.

Dick tells them the war is over in Germany, and Ron sways drunkenly to the thought that he missed all his chances. Maybe Japan, then. The tangle in his chest lift slightly at the thought. Then he thinks of Lipton’s boys, who will have to go too. He thinks of how no one else will be thinking of the Pacific, not at this very moment. Maybe the very next, but not this one. This moment is victory in Europe.

He closes his eyes and sees Lipton smile.

 

In Austria, he watches the men play baseball like boys and just barely smiles. It’s a fondness he hadn’t even noticed growing, mixed up the way it is in Lipton’s pride and affection. A jumbled warmth, tightening Ron’s gut and flooding through his veins and pulsing down to his fingertips, until he can’t separate which part of it is his and which part he’s just carrying around for someone else. He looks at the boys and sees Lipton across the field, bursting with joy and outshining the sun.

Then he blinks and turns his head, and it’s just Dick telling him to gather the men. Japan surrendered.

The relief is devastating.

He got his men through. Whatever else this means for him, they are here, hooting and hollering in the sunlight and ready to go home to their families. Lipton could stop giving him that worried look every time Ron closes his eyes, could release the tight band of anxiety he’s wound around Ron’s chest. He could rest easy—Ron got his boys home.

Maybe Ron could rest now, too.

That night he says no for the first time when Harry asks him to poker, finally allows himself to decline Nix’s invitation to drink.

Instead he sits on the edge of his extravagant bed in his extravagant rooms and finally allows himself to think of how perfectly out of place Lipton would look here—overworked, overtired, and far too modest, he’d trail his fingers along the fine duvet and say the bed was too soft. He would be right, and it would bother their backs after the frozen ground in Bastogne, the bombed out cushions in Haguenau, the army issue cots in Mourmelon. But he would be here. And they’d sleep on it anyway, and attempt to savor the luxury others didn’t get to see, and take up no more space than they had curled around each other in the tiny single bunks at Rachamps.

Ron finally allows himself to think of how Lipton would sleep on his left, how Ron would watch him until his own eyes drifted closed and memorize everything he could see—Lipton’s profile, a scar running jagged along his right cheek from Carentan and slightly discolored marks trailing off toward his right ear from Foy, and nothing but smooth, unbroken skin at his right temple.

And in the morning, after as much rest as he could be convinced to take, Lipton’s eyes would open—they would open.

Ron lies back on the bed and closes his eyes. He sees Lipton’s soft warm gaze and the sleepy way he smiled in the morning, hears the murmured greeting Ron had grown accustomed to coveting. He remembers until the sky is fully dark and no one will be looking for him until morning, and he finally allows himself to think, fractured and weary, _Carwood_.

In his dreams, Carwood smiles.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [this.](http://artbarter.co.uk/t.php?img=images/artist/people.jpg&w=520&h=455&t=thumbs/)


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